Easter and WMDs

Today, the Little Black Dress will don a beautiful dress and wear a hat the Queen of England would kill for.

The SONs of Thunder will actually comb their hair, tuck in their shirts, and Youngest will not wear flip-flops. We will go to church and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That part, I understand and believe.

What I don’t get is this whole Easter thing. It is a weird celebration started by pagans as part of some fertility rite, hence the egg thing. The Germans brought over the bunny idea in the 1700s. How those two very distinct things morphed into what we now call Easter, with a bunny dumping chocolate all over the house, is beyond me.

It has caused such turmoil in my brain I have at times overloaded. So much so the Easter part has turned into one of the SONs’ favorite holidays because it involves the distribution of handfuls of miniature weapons of mass destruction.

You are just going to have to bear with me on this one.

I get Christmas, even though it is slowly losing the “Christ” part. It will start somewhere around Sept. 3 this year, according to the Farmer’s Almanac and the Big Box Stores that control our pocketbooks. We will give gifts we can’t afford because God gave us his Son; or advertisers tell us to so we must obey. Your choice.

And I get Thanksgiving. Families get together, stuff themselves silly and get into nasty fights over something someone said/did 16 years ago. And then they fall asleep wherever there’s space. I get Halloween, too. Little kids wearing costumes involving zombies or action heros — accompanied by parental patrol units these days — knock and demand more and more candy. I’m good with July 4th, too, where we see who can blow up their fingers while we celebrate our nation’s founding with, well, explosives.

Easter ... not so much. I understand it’s really Resurrection Sunday — the day Christ rose from the dead. It is what Christianity hinges on. Everyone who lives must first be born. Everyone who is born dies. There is, for Christians, one exception to that last sentence. Throw in the Easter part, which is never mentioned in the Bible, along with the bunny, the chocolate, the egg hunt and I’m lost.

So, as I mentioned, we started doing things a little differently around here. We no longer do the egg hunt. To be honest, I just got tired of the SONs fighting each other over one egg when about 10 others are in clear sight. We still hide candy baskets, always in the same place, simply to watch the SONs bounce off the walls after ingesting all that chocolate. All nice and normal so far.

But things change. Maybe it was because we hit our limit at Christmas, and instead of waiting another year, we do a little mini Christmas. And somehow it has turned into weapons day.

One year it was BB guns. I don’t know. I recall the SONs all wanted them for some reason and The Dress looked at me and I said, “Why not.” Our bunny can do anything.

A tradition was born.

Another year it was Airsoft guns. And I don’t mean those little pistols, but full powered auto versions and sniper rifles. There was probably a Gatling gun in there somewhere. Yes, you could put your eye out.

Last year it was machetes. I’m not talking Tonka Toys but 18-inch blades with a saw on the top. Yeah, longer than the SONs’ arms. Robinson Crusoe would be happy.

And so were the SONs. They went out in the woods behind our house and started building lean-tos and deadman falls to try on each other. I guess they wanted to try their own version of “resurrection” day and see if it worked on each other.

The SONs’ friends are quite envious. The parental units of said friends think we’ve lost our minds and refuse to join our tradition. Time will tell.

Today will be no different. The SONs will get their weapons. We will go to church — minus the weapons. And upon our return friends will come over and we will celebrate together. Then the SONs and friends will go out to the woods, shouting promises back to us they won’t dismember each other.

The bunny and I are still debating this year’s gift. I say that because I turn in this column on Wednesdays. You’ll have to follow along next week to find out, but we’re thinking slingshots or those little miniature drones armed with missiles.

Celebrating Christ’s resurrection with friends, chocolate, rabbits and weapons of mass destruction. Well, it works for us.